


A Bouquet of Irises

by orphan_account



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Connor-centric, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, I am not sorry, M/M, Murphy siblings, The Author Regrets Everything, Treebros, actually i really am, hanahaki, sibling angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-07-17 20:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16103222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It hurt. It all hurt so much. The blinding yellow, the choked gags, the dark blood, the blue-and-yellow petals.The white hospital walls that loomed over him as he realized that they were all distant memories from before he passed out.





	1. I Miss My Life

_ It hurt. It all hurt so much. The blinding yellow, the choked gags, the dark blood, the blue-and-yellow petals.  _

_ The white hospital walls that loomed over him as he realized that they were all distant memories from before he passed out.  _

 

_ \--- _

 

Connor Murphy had known what the Hanahaki Disease was long before his throat started itching because of it. That didn’t mean he was supposed to believe it straight away. Because it was fictional. The disease was fictional. And it only seemed to affect people with unrequited  _ romantic _ love. He was 12 when he first searched it up. He didn’t exactly have a romantic interest at that point in time.

 

That came later. But if anything, that only made his pain even worse. 

 

Someone in his family didn’t love him.

 

It wasn’t hard to figure out who, really. After doing extensive research (which was mostly reading rather literate fanfiction about the disease that never seemed to truly depict his problem perfectly but a lot of the symptoms and solutions were frighteningly accurate), Connor found that the more you loved someone, the worse the disease was. It could range simply from occasionally coughing up single petals to constantly vomiting up blood and whole flowers that choked you and constricted your lungs and left you gasping for air like a helpless child trying to gasp for breath as they were trying to fight a current. 

 

The latter seemed to be the most common. 

 

Even 12-year-old Connor knew that his parents at least cared about him. His head seemed to nag at him a lot, eventually convincing him otherwise, but he had never coughed up the dark irises until he and his sister, Zoe, started fighting. Drifting away. It only made sense, because while he was an angry, violent monster who snapped at his innocent sister when she only provoked him in tiny ways that wouldn’t even be noticed by anyone who had a heart.

 

Apparently he did, though. Because even if his younger sister hated him, there was still the one side of him that still loved her. She was great and didn’t deserve any of the spiteful shit he gave her. In the long term, he didn’t mind her snide remarks over the dining table, or her habit of leaving his bedroom door open when she came in to say hello, or when she sang way too loud. He didn’t mind at all. He certainly wouldn’t intentionally wish all of his bad deeds on her ever again. But self regulation and control and live-time empathy seemed to be non-existent in him. 

 

Connor was fairly sure she didn’t know the cause of the flowers. Again, most people had heard of the disease, but as nothing more than a fictional concept to make a character pine after another. And that seemed unrealistic. She probably didn’t even think him capable of feeling such things as love and affection. Which he understood. She had absolutely no reason to.

 

Even when she was just 11, she had a sort of glow that made everyone trust her, per se. She was kind, polite, and even if she  _ did _ happen to be rude she said it with a childish giggle that didn’t fade with age. Not that he heard it anymore. In fact, she became noticeably less excitable around him, as if merely smiling too much would make him start to throw plates like a madman. The light-haired girl had every right to think that, though, no matter how many more petals it added to the boxes he kept of them whenever it was more tame and he could just cough them into his hand. They were pretty.

 

Something that he remembered quite vividly was the first time the disease landed him in the hospital. He remembered having tubes everywhere, making sure he could still breathe oxygen and not suffocate from the petals rapidly growing. He remembered constantly being moved from room to room because of some unknown reason (it wasn’t like moving his hospital bed up another 2 stories would create any more space. Maybe Connor just didn’t know how hospitals worked. It wasn’t like he was a doctor, or had ever planned on pursuing a career in that department). He clearly remembered the pristine white walls, the liquid food he had to be fed, the constant checkups, and the daily question he was still being asked 5 years later.

 

“Do you want the flowers surgically removed?”

 

Maybe most people would say  _ yes, of fucking course I want to get rid of this seemingly never-ending pain _ , but Connor didn’t want that.

 

The petals taught him a lot, actually. They taught him when his sister was scared of him (the edges were bleach-white), or when she hated him a bit less (they would, thank the probably non-existent heavens, stop, or lower to a more mild stage), or if she wanted him dead (parts of the flower would be ripped and broken and folded). Sometimes, Connor contemplated writing dates on the petals to have a clear way of telling what days she hated him more, less, whatever. But he never got around to doing it. He figured it would only be more emotionally painful.

 

That was the  _ real _ reason he didn’t want to get rid of the petals. You could surgically remove physical pain, but never replace wherever Zoe’s love for him should’ve been. He didn’t care if the lack of love killed him. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t change anything but his periodic breaks to the bathroom of him heaving up the irises.    
He had been told so many times that he would regret it. 

 

Out of all of his terrible decisions, he regretted that particular one the least. 

Years went by. Zoe had become her own complete person, instead of the young child that attached herself to people and mimicked their behaviour. She had gotten taller, and the curls that young her often loved twisting her finger around had straightened. She still had the same freckled lightly dusted across her nose, the same light butterscotch hair, the same childish giggle. She had gotten more mature, more passionate about music, more developed in so many ways. But one thing hadn’t changed in the 5 years they were distant, and Connor had doubts it would ever change.    
  


She still hated him. 

 

At breakfast, she would unnecessarily drop comments about him that he didn’t care to hear. Cynthia would ask him if he was, in fact, high, and he would simply lower his head and let his long, dark brown hair, knotty from not being brushed in  _ far _ too long, cover his face as he coughed up another few petals from behind the concealing curtain of hair. Not that anyone seemed to care after 5 years of the same old stupid bullshit. 

 

Even then, even when all he got was a few short words lined bitterly, it made it difficult to eat or drink. So he didn’t. He spat the petals into his bowl, tinting the creamy milk with a few drops of crimson. He tried to get out of going to school. He failed. He ran up to the bathroom and heaved out the flowers burning his mouth into the toilet. They were the same dark violet shade as always. They were still as pretty as always. They still left a horrible taste in his mouth that had less to do with him vomiting and more to do with hatred for the situation. No matter how many more flowers he choked out, no matter how many meals he was forced to skip because the petals refused to give way for food, it wouldn’t make his sister start caring. 

 

Connor knew he had to get ready for school. He could skip, but he had no doubt the honeydew-haired sibling would tell their parents. They’d be quite upset, and he frankly didn’t want to hear any of it. From what he’d heard at the dining table, Larry was knee deep in work as a lawyer- the stress formed in defined creases on his face that fixed his expression in a permanently frustrated frown. Cynthia never had much to do, though that didn’t stop her from getting worked up when he skipped, She let him do whatever he wanted, mostly doing nothing but comment on how it is Not A Productive Activity for him to practice.

 

She had a list of things like that. Things he shouldn’t do because it’s not beneficial in any form. They weren’t strictly held rules, not really. She would simply scold him with a disappointed smile. You could never take that smile away from her. She and Larry had quite different outlooks. While Cynthia was fixed on saying things like “Well, how would  _ they _ feel if you did that to them?” whereas Larry compared things to his childhood, often saying “When I was your age, we couldn’t stay in bed all day and check  _ the Facebook _ .” His father’s lack of understanding the fact that no one uses Facebook anymore bothered Connor, but not nearly as much as the rest of whatever he was saying. While Cynthia had a very loose, carefree style of parenting, Larry was strict on whatever could possibly be against his set rules. They both thought that  _ their  _ way was the right way, but Connor quite frankly disagreed. Neither of them could’ve been right, because otherwise he would’ve felt like he was safe talking to them about the Hanahaki problem. Which he didn’t. But then again, it wasn’t particularly characteristic of him to talk about his feelings. He didn’t bottle them up, either, though. He yelled and snapped and broke shit and vomited the rest of his emotions away.

 

It all lead back to the stupid fucking vomiting, didn’t it?

 

Connor splashed water into his face from the cold running water slipping down the sink, trying to help himself properly wake up. Except he didn’t. Instead, he splashed it at the reflection of his face in the bathroom mirror. He couldn’t stand looking at it anymore. His tired face was complete with eyebags from his countless nights of trying and failing to sleep, knotty and greasy dark brown hair that wasn’t always brown, but rather dyed that way after he decided that Zoe probably didn’t want to look any more related to him than they were, ghostly pale skin that made the light freckles dusted under his eyes and across his nose slightly easier to see, and mostly blue eyes. There was a part of his eyes that was brown and he was always more than slightly tempted to buy contact lenses to hide the heterochromatic pigment. He didn’t like the idea of having things in his eyes all the time, though, so he promptly decided against it. It wasn’t like people looked at his eyes enough to notice the different color. It would just be added to the Things That Make Connor Murphy a Freak. Connor didn’t want people to find out anything more about him than they already did, anyway. 

 

Right. School. He couldn’t stand in disgust at the image the mirror showed him forever. Because he tried and failed to get out of going to school. And he had to haul as many books as he could to school because reading was probably the one thing that could take his mind off the flowers and he needed the fictional worlds so badly. Anything to get out of Real Life. Real Life seemed to only want him to live and  _ suffer, suffer, suffer. _

 

A new petal choked out.

 

A new nickname to be called at school.

 

A new fist fight in the halls.

 

A new bruise tainting his cheek.

 

A new argument over the dining table.

 

A new reason to try and die, if the flowers didn’t get to him first.

 

Maybe  _ that _ was why he didn’t want them removed. They could kill him and he wouldn’t have to face the pain anymore. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? To not have to deal with the pain? It wouldn’t be another long day at school having to face whatever hellhole the world wanted him to be put through. Instead, it would be.. whatever came after death.

 

Not being religious made the whole death thing slightly more scary than he wanted to say. He didn’t believe in heaven or hell- even if he  _ did _ , it wasn’t like he’d end up getting the more pleasant of the two experiences. He wanted to say that death was like being unconscious. Not a whole new realm or anything. Just an emptiness. Maybe like a pause between another life. Like an episodic Netflix show. Death could be a try again. 

 

That would be nice.

 

Another thing that he had read, once, was that in your life, you never die. Only in this particular timeline. In another timeline, you could’ve died in your sleep, or from a car accident, or from a rope around your neck hanging from a tree. But in this timeline, you get to witness everyone you love and care about die. 

 

Naturally, that train of thought led him to Zoe. What would happen if she died? He personally hated to think about her death, but if that theory was correct, then, he’d have to be alive for his parents’ death. His sister’s. Anyone he’d ever known. He didn’t know how to accept that if that theory was correct, he’d have to lose her. His sister, who he’d been nothing but awful to, dead. Would he ever have time to apologize? If he did, would she even want to be in his presence long enough to accept the apology?

 

He didn’t deserve forgiveness. 

 

But at the same time, if she died, would the flowers stop? Was Connor’s sister dying the easy cure? It was so,  _ so _ cruel to think like that, and he’d never wish for that to be the way out, but what if it was true? Maybe he’d find himself in the same trap, latching himself to someone who wouldn’t at all mind him dying. The same loop, different person. 

 

Someone else had caused the flowers before. Or rather, quite a few people had, in the past. It was the worst, because of course he was too much of a coward to ever even try to get on good terms with anyone, and if he  _ did _ , well, their opinion changed back to thinking ‘Connor Murphy is a manipulative monster’ pretty damn quickly.

 

A boy named Lucas Raybarman had triggered them when he was 14. The iris petals were pretty and yellow. He hated them. But still, he found a secret pleasure in keeping them on his bedside shelf. They were later shoved into a box with the rest of the flowers. Despite not having seen Lucas for a good two years, he still quite vividly remembered the boy’s light brown, curly hair and pretty chocolate brown eyes that glimmered with a friendliness you’d have to be blind not to trust. 

 

Connor got a whole year of watching from the sidelines and spitting up those tauntingly cheerful colored petals before he had to move schools for his last two years of school.

The next year, of course he was stupid enough to fall blindly in love with someone else. And another. It was repetitive, but short term and fine. Sure, there was still the odd hospital trip because he physically couldn’t move anymore due to the ever so constricting pain of the flowers, but after a few weeks he could get out again and he was fine. Stupid crushes that shouldn’t have meant anything really  _ weren’t _ anything in the long run. Out of the list of girls and boys he’d silently watched, none of them had particularly hated him. Not like his sister. They just didn’t care. And because Connor had no pre-established relationship with them, the symptoms were mild in comparison. And whatever he had felt faded away pretty easily. 

 

To save himself the trouble, Connor simply stopped allowing himself to notice the outside world and stay inside the flaming pit of his head. He couldn’t fall in love with anyone that way, could he?

 

It worked, he thought. No yellow flowers for at least a year. Maybe if he could just put on headphones and keep his head lowered, it would stay that way, and he could just work on his relationship with Zoe. No messy other relationships he had to think about.

 

“Connor. What the hell are you doing?” A voice asked- Zoe’s voice. He could practically feel her hard gaze on him without needing to look in the mirror to see her. He 

swallowed down the thick petals in his throat before turning around to meet her eyes. 

 

In the dim lighting, you couldn’t exactly see it, but she had heterochromia, too. Not like his. Connor’s eyes were mostly blue save for half of his right eye, whereas hers were mostly a sapphire blue with a caramel centre. Less noticeable, but a lot more nice, especially in contrast to his dull and empty eyes. Maybe it had more to do with the look they held in their eyes, but hers seemed.. alive. As if she wasn’t going through the motions of the day like a puppet on strings. That’s how Connor felt a lot. Whoever his puppeteer was seemed to be truly cruel. 

 

“I’m just washing my face, Zoe. Nothing to worry about,” He said calmly. But he didn’t. The puppeteer instead forced him to say something else more cruel. He wasn’t completely sure what he said. But either way, his sister was unphased by it. Harsh words were nothing she wasn’t used to.

“I can tell,” She folded her arms in response to whatever he had said. She bounced her leg behind her and pursed her lips. Waiting. “Are you gonna move at any point or are you planning on staying there all day?” 

 

Connor sighed loudly, more of a huff of frustration if anything. He didn’t know what to say, so he left. Without a word. Stupid puppeteer making him feel lightheaded and worthless. Stupid puppeteer making him say and do shit he didn’t want to do. He didn’t want to hurt people. He didn’t want to scare them off. But that always seemed to be what he did. It never mattered what he wanted to do. 

 

He was simply another puppet in this fucked up show he didn’t want to be in.


	2. A New Shade of Yellow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was yet to learn how to live with one of Zoe’s cloud-glazed glares staring into his soul. Past it. 
> 
> Was it her hatred of him that made him vomit? Or was it the guilt and utter self-loathing that it triggered instead? They seemed to go hand in hand. Neither would be that surprising.

Connor didn’t want to go to school. That was easy to say- only people who wore a smile as if it was in red paint on their face like a clown would be able to disagree. Maybe if he could spend senior year at another school, his  _ old  _ school, he could be given a chance to live without being suffocated by noise, thoughts, petals... But those wouldn’t change. The petals wouldn’t go away. Even if the bright, stark yellow against deep a deep indigo sky adorning those petals glowed with happiness and joy, it was as much of a sham as the act he knew people like the girl who walked with her head held high not in confidence, but to play the same game of pretend that children playing in parks would enjoy. 

 

Alana Beck, so clearly put together, and yet falling apart at the seams. They had shared classes over the years, but memory clouded which ones, or in which year. Her constant busyness told everyone she was always at work, but if anyone bothered to actually observe and not just look, maybe they’d see her pulling out her phone every few minutes, reloading pages, opening and closing and reopening apps and emails hoping for.. something. Connor wasn’t sure what, exactly. Maybe a notification. Maybe a friend. Maybe it was what anyone who didn’t care to think for a minute would assume: some sort of very,  _ very  _ important email regarding some job she obviously did over the summer. But still, he had doubts. 

 

The dark-skinned girl was suddenly almost in his face, with that same wide smile that he recognized, but as much as the grin made her seem like a flower in bloom, her weary eyes wilted from behind her glasses. Connor pitied her and the act she put up, however hard she tried to convince the rest of the school. That pity was all that stopped him from pushing her aside and just getting through the day. It would’ve been much easier.

 

“Hey, Connor!” Alana smiled too sincerely to actually be sincere. He stopped walking to hear her out, but the false image of friendliness made him feel quite unsettled with how they were both quite similar- while everyone knew of both  _ of  _ them, it never seemed that anyone bothered to try and  _ know  _ them. Know more than simple rumors and assumptions. At least the bright and overbearingly genial one of the two stood a chance at pushing past that. If she learned how to slow down and listen to others instead of constantly putting up that act of always,  _ always  _ having something positive to say. That was their key difference: while Alana Beck lived to stand tall and shine like a glowing beacon of hope and change, Connor was the flipped side of the coin- the shadows cast from the sunbeams. People don’t go out seeking darkness, someone to snap at them in some sort of paranoia. They go outside to find people like Alana. Never him. 

 

“Mine was, well, at least,  _ I  _ think mine was productive,” She continued. Connor stood in confusion, only furrowing his brows slightly to show it. Her  _ what _ ? How long had she even been talking for as he tuned out? And  _ why, _ again, was she even talking to him? Alana wasn’t known for spreading rumors, but if she changed over the break, much like how  _ everyone  _ changes over time, and was just here to-

 

He didn’t realize he had almost completely zoned out until a muffled voice said his name and tugged him back into reality.

 

“Connor?” She repeated, eyes widened in something poised to look like concern. “You’re being really quiet. What’s wrong?” 

 

He didn’t meet her eyes as she opened her mouth to say something else. The stormy blue of his eyes was clouded with a sort of electrical thunder he couldn’t fully grasp. “Hey. Alana. I don’t give a shit about whether you’re speaking from your heart or from your need for some fucking attention, but whatever it is-” Connor wanted to leave. He wanted to shut up and leave. But as soon as he lifted his foot to try, that thunder in his eyes, lightning in his body, kicked in, and suddenly that foot was desperate to find ground to strike, and he found himself threateningly close to her.”-It’s as fucking worthless as anyone else in this school. Fucking give up on trying.”

 

Connor wasn’t sure if it was the ground or him that was shaking, but nevertheless, he could only stand and take one ragged breath before meeting eyes with a stone-faced Zoe across the hall.

 

And then he ran.

 

\---

 

Brown hair hid parts of his already otherwise blurry vision as tears threatened to spill with each choked noise, each wilted petal coated in liquid red. It hurt  _ so fucking much _ to breathe, like each inhale was filtered by layers of sand and the exhale constricting his chest until he could feel his heart crying out at the sheer pain of it. She had been there, the entire time. Zoe had been watching him snap out of pure idiocy, and she’d hate him even more, even more than befo-

 

Another hurl into the toilet he crouched next to while he cowered in the bathroom stall interrupted his thoughts- he was more focused on bracing himself with his arms so he didn’t lose all his strength. He already felt weak enough to collapse into a pile of shattered pieces. He was honestly surprised it hadn’t already happened. It wasn’t like this particular segment of time didn’t feel like a torturous loop of his life someone endlessly cruel kept on replaying out of sheer pleasure. 

 

Sometimes, Connor felt like the exact villain he had painted in his head.

 

Other times, he  _ knew  _ the two were one and the same, the other pair of eyes staring at the same image.

 

And when he couldn’t bear any of the bullshit his life seemed to be full of, he turned himself into the villain, and let himself become powerless to his own rage that burned hotter and higher than any bonfire. 

 

Maybe the only difference between him and the maliciously cruel image he had in his head was that while the imaginary demon couldn’t care at all about who he harmed, or how, Connor was weighed down by the shackles of guilt.

 

But that didn’t even begin to describe how much he wanted to erase parts of time when he found isolation and the thoughts came flooding in.

 

There were no shackles of guilt, but rather whip lashings. Whip lashings performed in private so that no one would see him wilt as much as the iris petals floating in the toilet bowl, so that no one would see him as weak and broken as he was. 

 

To everyone else, he could be the caricatured villain.

 

He wasn’t sure if it made him better or worse to know he wasn’t.

 

Connor cringed at the awful taste that lingered in his mouth as he attempted to slow his breathing- however raspy and forced and painful those breaths were. It was only a mere inconvenience that he never hated breathing more than when he had been vomiting flowers. The tightness of his chest, his lungs, never seemed to fade until hours, or on occasion, days, later. He knew why, but he wished the flowers would evaporate slower, if only so he could die sooner. He brushed the hair in his face to the side with a single motion, the creamy-white bathroom walls blanking to black for a frighteningly long moment when he stood up, fading back to reality as he braced himself against the wall. Unlike the bitterness in his mouth, the solid 15 seconds of total blindness and longer-term dizziness wasn’t just reserved for after coughing up blood and petals, but similarly, it was just another inconvenience he could learn to live with. That he already  _ had  _ learned how to live with. And still, he was yet to learn how to live with one of Zoe’s cloud-glazed glares staring into his soul. Past it. 

 

Was it her hatred of him that made him vomit? Or was it the guilt and utter self-loathing that it triggered instead? They seemed to go hand in hand. Neither would be that surprising. 

 

As Connor stared at the wall in front of him, he started questioning the worth of getting up and going anywhere at all. He could just sit there and wait until he died. It was sure to be soon, anyway. He was used to the choking, the painful breathing. Maybe that would give his death a touch of familiarity, another drop of comfort. 

 

Would she miss him at all? Would Zoe be happier without the burden of his shadow hiding her ever-dimming light, or would the weight become so familiar it had the same comfort he found in having his throat constricted by petals? He knew the answer to that. People like  _ Zoe _ , like  _ Alana _ , who put aside their needs to help other people, would never miss a selfish, neurotic asshole like him. He was almost destined to fuck up, around every single corner and bend. And just because guilt had a grip on him tighter than a noose, just because he had a kernel of love in his soul, didn’t mean he was suddenly some redeemable angel.

 

No, he’d have to clean up a whole landfill full of mess for that to even come close to happening.

 

He let go of a breath he had never been aware of holding in the first place, the tension in his chest that made it hard for him to properly breathe at all releasing with it. 

 

No matter how much time Connor spent there, the Earth would never get to see Redeemable Connor. The Earth was more than happy to bring the caricatured villain to life. Connor-... Connor wasn’t. Maybe that just played into the world’s plans with him.

 

\---

 

He wanted to spit into the bright colors of the school garden, the lush grass that was only so mint-green because it didn’t seem anyone- save for the occasional small groups of people looking for solidarity -knew of the well-kept garden fit between two dull gray buildings. While the garden itself was saturated and alive, the same could not be said for the rest of the school- the lone bench Connor sat at as he glared at the portion of quiet peace included. The bench was once painted a deep maroon shade, but it only showed in flecks and patches, and the wood itself was worn and uneven. 

 

Bored of the silence, he opened his phone to Spotify, playing some album by Florence + The Machine become background music to his thoughts, the opening silence of  _ June  _ giving him a moment to settle down before a voice started singing, and he let himself fade into nothing more than a mere concept, a simple fragmented thought.

 

Connor’s eyes settled on the garden, the colorful flowers whispering for him to rip them out. He ignored them, and yet his eyes settled on bright yellow irises. Cruel, perfect irises that bloomed with love and life. The only difference he could find between those ones and the flowers he had killing him was one was alive and admired. The other was grown in the Garden of Proserpine, made as a one-way trip to the Underworld itself.

 

At some point,  _ June _ ended, and somehow the chorus of  _ Hunger  _ started and startled him enough to bring him to immerse himself in the lyrics, close his eyes and block out the hatred that came with loving, the shadow that was cast by the light.

 

_ We all have a hunger. _

 

Connor knew that. He knew the pain of hunger. He knew, quite vividly, how it felt to be starved of love and care, of a voice, of a flattering spotlight that didn’t shine on all the parts of him he wished he could hide, erase.

 

All it took was that one connection and he was not even thinking that the school wasn’t empty when he closed his eyes and sung along to the lyrics with more emotion and vulnerability than he ever knew he could show. More anger and hurt displayed in voice than he had ever showcased when he yelled or cried in fear of himself. Each lyric was a stretching mindmap of his own reflection, rather than the meaning Florence had woven into her poem. 

 

Without the instrumentals, the backing vocals, Connor’s voice was bare and visible, broken and clear. He never considered himself anything more than a mediocre singer, but that didn’t stop him from pouring all he had into the pre-chorus, letting himself craft the chorus itself into his own, flowing past that and into the second verse. And when that finally faded into the silence that preceded the rest of the song, he was met with a sound that was neither from his earphones or his throat. 

 

“C- I-.. I didn’t know that you sing..?”

 

Connor looked up immediately, a single earphone taken away from his ear, but his eyes yielded nothing of what he had shown just a moment before as he studied the face a good 6 feet away from him. They weren’t supposed to be there. Especially not talking to him. He didn’t recognize them- perhaps they were new and didn’t know who he was. Didn’t know to hate him. But there was an equal chance that they had seen that morning, heard whispers and rumors, or that they shared a class and picked up that Connor hadn’t been at school- or rather, was in school grounds, but not in class, if only to avoid Zoe picking up his absence too easily. Or, instead, they might not be new at all. And their wide eyes and fingers that were constantly fidgeting were just part of the act to make themselves seem less threatening, only to kickstart a whole new spiral of rumors.

 

“I don’t,” Connor stated simply. He let himself seem bored, even if he could feel some inner part of him shatter at the loss of a potential ally in the war of high school- not that he would’ve stood a chance in the first place. “Who are you? Why are you here?” 

 

A single worded response: “Evan.” It only answered half of his questions, but Connor could live with that. 

 

“I don’t know you.”

 

“I do,” Evan replied, a flash of fear flickering on his face as he tensed and immediately backtracked. The brunet only let himself raise his eyebrows in question. “I- I mean. I know me. Of course I do! Sorry-” He let out a clearly forced laugh as he kept talking. “-I know- I know you, too, I guess, but not really- I’ve seen you. That’s what I meant. It’s not like I stalk you or anything- anything creepy like that.” 

 

By the time Evan had finished talking, the beginning of South London Forever had started playing and Connor was humming along. “If you know me,” He started, pausing the song and glaring right through the boy in front of him, as if he was instead looking at something far behind him, in the distance. “Then why are you here?”

 

Silence.

 

And then-

 

_ “I’m really really sorry, I can go if you want- I’ll go.” _

 

It seemed as if there was supposed to be a pause somewhere, but it was missing. Each word Evan said seemed to flow into the next with no end, the silence where his sentence was supposed to be replaced with a shaky and fast inhale. 

 

“I- I’ll go.”

 

And just like that, Evan was gone, his blue no longer contrasting with the yellow irises Connor found himself staring at instead. 

 

Just like that, he was alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY an update!!!
> 
> i am so, so, so, so, so sorry for the unexpected hiatus!!!! i didnt mean for that to happen. at all. but here, have this shorter chapter. i hc connor listening to things like icon for hire and florence + the machine, evan listening to more instrumental tracks (think lofi music, mostly), zoe liking echosmith, dodie, billie eilish, cavetown- i dont really have many ideas for what jared and alana would listen to, so gimme ideas for all of the characters!!
> 
> thanks for reading btw, i really, truly appreciate you guys waiting 
> 
> ~synth


	3. Another Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The endless waves of that torrent were still ebbing and flowing over him, trapping him in a hollow husk of a state. The fear and terror of knowing that his attempts to be seen only ended up in complete failure felt numb. It was there, present, but numb and distant nonetheless. It was nothing more than overlapping noises he couldn’t decipher with water blocking the sound from his ears.

The art of running, it seemed, was the only art Evan could master. He didn’t have the inspiration in his bleak life to create any kind of verbal or visual art, lacked the persistence to play an instrument, and he hated the sound of his own voice far too much to even attempt to sing. Running, though, was easy. Just get out of sight and earshot. Don’t bother anyone, and blend into the walls. Clamp your mouth shut, because there’s nothing valuable to be spoken, anyway. 

 

Evan wasn’t sure if it’d ever even be worth putting himself out there. He had tried, and it had barely been a minute of conversation before it had ended. Not that his and Connor’s exchange was even a conversation at all. And neither of them got anything from it, from what he could tell. Nothing  _ positive _ from it. A few vocal stabs, a blatantly clear reminder that even the notoriously infamous Connor Murphy didn’t know of his existence.

 

Perhaps that idea of Connor wasn’t correct. He didn’t seem as cruel of a person when he was singing- that razor-sharpness only returned when Evan broke in and tried talking to him. A mistake in itself. But when the brunet was immersed in that song, singing lyrics Evan had never heard of before and yet found familiar in the moment when he heard the song sung alone without the support of instruments. Raw and alone, that’s how it felt. And yet, when the singing was replaced by a voice of biting cold ice, the warmth and anger and unconcealed fiery familiarity was washed over by a torrent. 

 

The endless waves of that torrent were still ebbing and flowing over him, trapping him in a hollow husk of a state. The fear and terror of knowing that his attempts to be seen only ended up in complete failure felt numb. It was there, present, but numb and distant nonetheless. It was nothing more than overlapping noises he couldn’t decipher with water blocking the sound from his ears. 

 

And yet, even as Evan struggled to get both his mind and body to function enough to find someplace to reside that wasn’t the garden he has spent his junior year cowering in, that static background noise was still present, reminding him of the fact that Connor hated him- that everyone did. It was easy to hate him, wasn’t it? It was easy to hate him for the surface alone- his awkwardness, stupid interests, lack of talents, fragmented sanity, whatever else anyone actually bothered to notice. But no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t find a kernel of himself that someone might like. So why even try to show any more than he had to? Why  _ not  _ hide away? As much as Dr. Sherman might attempt encouraging him to move away from that mentality, it was just as much a part of him as anything else. He couldn’t erase it with drugs. He could try to push past it, as he had with Connor, but ultimately..

 

Failure. It always ultimately ended in failure.

 

That was all his friendship with Jared was, wasn’t it?

 

No, not a friendship. It couldn’t even be called that. Not when Jared seemed to delight in making it so painfully obvious that Evan  _ didn’t  _ have friends, and that they were in fact  _ family  _ friends. Apparently an entirely different thing. While Evan didn’t understand how they were different at all, he didn’t exactly have much to compare it to. Throughout his life, Jared had been his closest- and only- real friend. When they were both kids, they knew and played with everyone. Standard child behavior. But as groups became more segregated, and people developed their own opinions on others, Evan found himself a part of his own group- him and Jared. Nowhere near as large a group as anyone else’s, and often, he longed for more, but even then, he had resistance to that urge to connect. He knew better than to intrude on a group that was perfectly fine without him.

 

Perhaps it wasn’t resistance at all that kept him back at all. It was fear, rather. Fear that they wouldn’t like who they saw. Knowing that it wasn’t worth the rejection. 

 

Even Jared, who had been his companion since the beginning, had drifted away over time. Now, he seemed to only talk when they saw one another, keep their conversation to an  _ absolute  _ minimum, and slip in as many reminders as he could of his motivation behind bothering with him at all. ‘

 

Evan didn’t know when his  _ family  _ friend gave up on him. It felt distant, unfamiliar, but once, they were friends. Real friends. Not distant, but close. Once it was true. 

 

Once.

 

Not anymore.

 

Now, Jared wanted nothing to do with him. He knew everything about him and still turned his back as soon as he could. Why would anyone else be any different? Why would  _ Connor _ , of all people, be different?

 

Perhaps he had some hope in Connor before- hoped that perhaps their utter loneliness would be where they could connect. But the hope was fruitless. And Evan was reminded once again how useless it was for him to try. Connor didn’t appear to have a problem with being alone- the lyrics he was singing reminded him of a longing for more, and yet Evan seemed to have more of a connection to them than the person who was singing them. It couldn’t be overly hard to fake emotion, could it? Not any harder than it would be for him to lie through his teeth to his mother that he had been messaging Jared- instead of the reality beneath the partially concealing mask, of which being that he didn’t have friends and was instead watching some documentary about a woman who died while watching tv. No one had found her body until three years later, according to the film, due to her utter reclusiveness and lack of outside communication. perhaps, one day, that’d be his fate. 

 

_ Mark Evan Hansen: Remains Discovered After Three Years. _

 

He could see the newspaper article with a headline tucked behind some tiresome celebrity scandal that most people would probably care a lot more about than some guy who died without anyone knowing. There are much more pressing matters than someone whose family couldn’t care less about seeing him dead. Like some actress being dumped over text.

 

It wasn’t overly fair to belittle his mother’s efforts so much. As much as her soft voice and gentle expressions were catered to make him feel supported, her grey eyes were weary, desperate. Each encouraging lie she spoon fed him was much more condescending than anything- as if she expected him to not be able to see through them, to see the monochromatic reality. It was their dance, it seemed. To lie until the other finally spoke up. Neither of the two Hansen’s knew the song, but as they tried to adjust, settle, it seemed the beat only really got faster, faster until it matched his beating heart. 

 

It seemed almost standard, now, for his heartbeat to race. Evan might be used to running, hiding, but fear crept in just as much when he was alone. While being around others felt like he was nothing more than a small hare frozen in the presence of a wolf, being alone was a cascade of nightmares following him- awful dreams of him being ripped to shreds out of nothing but spite. Objectively, facing the predators of his school was worse than getting lost in the fears of them hating him, but it seemed the lines were much, much more blurred than that. Most lines, when examined, seemed to be like that.

 

After what could have either been a minute or 30, a kernel of safety decided to finally show itself- behind some oversized shed. There were only one group of people nearby, as opposed to the typical emptiness of the garden he had escaped from, or the seemingly immeasurable groups Evan hadn’t dared to even look at.

 

The blur of thoughts his head didn’t clear as he fell to the ground and hid his head in his knees. For a moment, he could feel himself break from the inside out. But the tears, the panic, the anxiety didn’t come for him.

 

Evan couldn’t make himself say it was a blessing that the bell sounded before he shattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so. an evan chapter. this ones considerably shorter- an intentional choice, as this fic is connor centered, i just wanted to throw this in. because its not so important, maybe i'll delete it at another point in time and reupload it later, but for now, here ya go. thanks for reading, as always, and give me any critique you have! we could all use some improvement- i know i do, haha
> 
> ~synth


	4. Muffled Sounds and Ripped Petals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Was it worth leaving the bathroom? He’d only spit out flowers again, or hold it back until he’d finally end up with grey skin and empty eyes on the floor. He got up anyway. Why did anyone do anything when their efforts would only be wasted? Simply for the hell of it. So Connor did the same.

Connor walked back home only a minute after Evan’s disappearance. Music drowned out his constantly incoming thoughts, but it pained his ears. His headphones did their job, though, and the volume kept complaints away with it. He let himself feel numb. It was either that or worse. Total numbness was as close as he was going to get to tranquility. He wasn’t stupid enough to push his emotional expectations higher than that. Trying to feel emotions was its own thing in of itself: But searching for reasons to feel a specific way always made everything worse. Maybe not for Most People, but there weren’t many instances where he could be melded into that category anyway. 

 

For example, Most People didn’t vomit flowers. That was something he had learned by Cynthia’s forced distress- and probably the only thing. Of course, for some period of time, she found herself in some Hanahaki Parent Support Group, and each time, fed him information he had already found on an infographic he had glanced over. It was something like 1 in 25,000. Was that most people? He didn’t care. He didn’t see many other people coughing up flower petals. 

 

Most People never had to. Connor was sure that more people had the disease. He couldn’t believe that he was the only student at his school who suffered from caring about someone else by their body physically rejecting it. They probably just never had the onset that triggered it. They probably just never had to prove that they deserved it. 

 

Most People weren’t thwarted by minuscule things- like the gaps between concrete slabs. Each slab was filled with memories of him stepping precariously over them, minding the gaps his eyes were fixated on, and his the shadow of his sister, her being seven and him only one year her senior, the only sign that she was still there besides her frequent observations of what was happening, and what she wished was happening. It was hard to tell which was which sometimes, or at the very least, for eight-year-old Connor. But the childish, naive and playful nature he had at that age was something he’d kill to have back regardless. He’d kill to have his sister back. He’d die for it. 

 

For a long time, Connor used to go to bed, unable to sleep, and imagine what life would be like if he never existed. It began sometime after the flower petals started choking him slowly- twelve or thirteen. The alternate worlds always seemed much happier than the reality he couldn’t escape. There was a perfect, happy family- an  _ actual _ happy family, that wasn’t staged to hide the pain he always caused- and the spare room that he usually would’ve filled was instead a movie room. On Sunday nights, in this alternate world, Zoe and Cynthia would watch a movie together, Larry still out. Zoe’s smile would be so much more natural, Cynthia’s less pained, Larry’s less forced.

 

Of course, it didn’t take many more years for him to realize that his parents were only still together because of him and Zoe. If he hadn’t existed, they’d be long divorced. Zoe wouldn’t end up being born either, and Cynthia would have to find a job of her own to be able to support her life without a husband bringing in the income for her.

 

Connor couldn’t decide whether that was better or worse than the true reality, even after the years of questioning it.

 

When he took out his earphones and finally got inside his house, Cynthia was there, in an exaggerated shock. He could almost hear her thoughts.  _ Christ, he couldn’t even last through the first day of school- What do I have to do next to fix him? Send him to some discipline camp? _ He shot a sullen glare at her and turned to the stairs, her protests and reprimands and lecturing she voiced drowned beneath a ringing in his ears. He knew full well that he wasn’t  _ supposed  _ to leave school before the end of the day came around- he had at least some amount of common sense, but it wasn’t hard to ignore. He lived by the phrase  _ Rules are made to be broken. _ He didn’t believe it, but when said rules were harder to follow than break, he couldn’t make himself bother stepping in line. Most of the time, at the very least. 

 

Connor wasn’t certain what he wanted from his parents. What he  _ expected _ from them. Not the sort of  _ ‘Connor isn’t perfect like the rest of us and we must fix this immediately’  _ or  _ ‘Connor is going through an awfully long phase of self-righteousness and we must wait to see if he will grow out of it’  _ approaches his parents had. They both tried, sure. But it always seemed like it was out of efforts to keep up the image of absolute perfection. And neither worked, at all. Both were fake as shit. Larry less so than Cynthia, sure, but always fake nonetheless. It was condescending, fake, desperate. As if it wasn’t clear enough from the beginning- from the arguments, dry humor, isolation, lashing out- he was not at all the image they had expected of their first child. He was much more reminiscent of each of their flaws.

 

He was stubborn and isolated- both from Larry. He was easily overwhelmed by emotions- Cynthia- but had learned how to shelter others from those emotions- again, courtesy to Larry. And like both of them, he could care. He could care about others, sure, but expressing that was nothing more than a matter of how long those particular people could stand his presence. Needless to say, neither of his parents- or Zoe- were one of those people who could bear him around. He wasn’t sure how many people could at all.

 

Connor was more than fine to not be all buddy-buddy with everyone. He preferred his own company most of the time, and once he was drained of social competence, at his core there was nothing but irritability. He didn’t genuinely despise many people when he lashed out. He certainly didn’t despise or hate his sister when he yelled at her for the most trivial, minor things. But she sure seemed to think he did, and hated him right back for it.

 

_ That _ was what he hated. He hated not even being worth her care. Zoe- who, despite asking a few too many questions and pressing on subjects that shouldn’t always be pressed on, was loyal and caring. She had her walls up and didn’t let everybody in, but she showed kindness to everyone who hadn’t proved that they didn’t deserve it.  _ He _ , however, had. As much as he knew he deserved the hell she gave, he hated it more than any person. He hated himself for not deserving it. Maybe he was the only person he actually hated. 

 

Connor couldn’t help but fall onto his bed as soon as he was in his room with the door shut, alone. The very idea of doing anything else- even sketching some side profile quickly- seemed unfathomable, useless. No one saw the drawings he did, and most of them ended up in the trash can. The ones that didn’t were in a leather sketchbook he simply kept in his bookshelf. Not hidden, but not obvious enough to attract any minor amounts of attention. Would it even matter if anyone saw? Probably not. They could easily be overlooked. Maybe it was just the minor detail of his life that he drew at all- maybe he just wanted to keep that hidden. It was much easier to pretend he was an inhumane monster who didn’t care about anything, had no hobbies or interests. No one cared to look deeper. 

 

Too many of the treatments Cynthia had forced him into assumed he was completely naive to himself. That  _ he _ had never analyzed himself. It became a frequent retort for him to spit:  _ “You can’t hate someone you don’t know.” _ None of their faces revealed anything, in the years of pointless talk therapy and medication and rehab and summer camps. Nothing he said seemed to make it clear that if he could be better, he  _ would. _ If he could be better, he would already make amends with Zoe, get along with his parents, fix his school reputation and get along in life. But it didn’t work like that. No simple apology could undo years of fucking everything up at every opportunity. To be fair, neither would him locking himself away from everyone and never saying anything when he couldn’t breathe from the choking petals and yelling at everyone who ever bothered to try, but it was a hell of a lot easier. Not because he wanted to, but similar to how he didn’t  _ want  _ to have numerous sleepless nights from sheer guilt, the more he tried, the deeper he dug himself. It was simply a lose/lose situation that Connor had completely lost any and all faith in. It was simply useless, like everything else in this fragment of time in the grand scheme of the universe.

 

He could feel a lump form in his throat, though it wasn’t entirely clear whether or not it was simply petals. Frankly, he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to do anything about it regardless- so why did it matter at all? He turned over on his back and swallowed thickly, but it changed little more than nothing at all.

 

Connor’s room was clustered, to say the least. The only real organized thing was his bookshelf- if only to not rip and fold the pages- and even that was nothing more than piles of assorted books stacked on top of one another, with whatever else could be fitted in, until there was virtually no space left. His bed was an unkempt mess, with pillows off on the side and the blankets folded over one another, papers with unfinished sketches scattered throughout the room. It wasn’t the prettiest sight. As much as Cynthia made it clear that it simply was not an appropriate state, especially if guests came over, no one came in except for him, and the silence and solitude were likely to remain that way, even if guests came for dinner. He had neither the motivation nor the reasons to bother trying to fix up his disaster of a bedroom. 

 

In the desolation of his room, time seemed to fade away into a mere concept that shifted in speed spontaneously, seconds could become minutes and hours in nothing more than a sigh and the resting of his eyes. Less, sometimes. Other times, he could be simply reading, but a thick chapter- despite seemingly taking at least an hour- lasts only 10 minutes, and he’s left to contemplate whether or not that chapter was as long as he really thought it was. So he had no idea how much time had slipped away from the grasp of his fingertips when a sound came through his door- knocking. He could barely force himself to sit up to greet whoever was there. It was probably Cynthia, coming to further explain why he shouldn’t have left school early. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the speech, he sure as hell didn’t plan on dressing up and preparing for the occasion. He coughed before opening his mouth to ask what she wanted _ ,  _ but was met by Zoe standing in the doorway, her face as blank as paper. 

 

“Dinner’s ready,” She said, standing still and plain. She let nothing show but the words she was saying. “Mom and Dad want to talk to you as well. I’m not sure whether or not I’m surprised you didn’t get through the first day.”

 

Connor refused to sit up, to meet her eyes. “Tell them I’m not hungry. If they want to talk to me, they can do it  _ without _ making me lose my appetite altogether.” The response came in silence hanging in the air, before it was snapped by footsteps walking out, and the door slamming shut just loud enough to make him wince. Judging by the lack of reprimands coming from their parents, he had to assume that the sound wasn’t enough for them to think anything from it downstairs. 

 

As more time passed, hunger and boredom grew. So many things were scattered throughout his room, and yet none seemed to appeal. At some point, voices had been raised downstairs, so he kept to his room, now sitting upright, piecing together the muffled words. 

 

_ “We get one meal of peace-  _ _ one! _ - _ and you had to bring  _ _ him _ _ up?” _

 

_ “Zoe, _ please sit down.”

 

_ “Oh, come on. Like you care. It’s all about Connor, right? Because he’s the only one who could  _ _ possibly _ _ be upset about something.” _

 

Connor found himself not hungry anymore- Cynthia didn’t have to be going on about what he had to improve on to make him lose his appetite, apparently. Him having this kind of toll on Zoe was just as bad. And she wasn’t even saying it to his face.

 

“Sit down,  _ please _ . I do care about you, your brother just has..  _ issues  _ he can’t sort out on his own.”   
  
_ “And I don’t?”  _ The lump in his throat had formed again, and he could feel his face get hot with anger.  _ He _ had done this to her.  _ “Just because  _ _ I’m _ _ not yelling all the damn time, doesn’t mean- And I’m supposed to think you care? Dad hasn’t even said anything!” _

 

Something else was said- supposedly by Larry, but the sound was nothing more than a mere low murmur from where Connor was listening. 

 

_ “Seriously, Dad? You’re just going to-” _ Zoe stopped talking. Cut herself off. He felt the urge to go to her, back her up, apologize already, but that thought was cut off as well when heavy, but swift footsteps that were coated in a quiet- but very much clear- anger and disappointment.

 

_ I’m sorry. _ He mouthed the words, and he meant them with every part of him, but they were a million times harder to say aloud. It was easier  _ done _ than  _ said, _ for once- it wasn’t a welcome change in saying. Though, it wouldn’t be much better if he could say it, but never really mean it. Empty words sting more than silence.    
  


Connor’s hand fell next to him, but the lump in his throat was growing more and more painful until it was ever so clear that it wasn’t the prediction of a breakdown, but rather broken iris petals clotting together in his throat. He wanted to hold off, to wait until he was certain Zoe was not still in her justified fit and his parents were fine to eat without the company of their children, but he couldn’t breathe no matter how hard or how little he tried, and it came on all so sudden and each time he tried to inhale air it was promptly cut short before any real oxygen filled his lungs. It wasn’t long before he had no choice in the matter and his body took action for him- he was nothing but a mere bystander as his left hand wrapped itself over his mouth and his right guiding the rest of his body to the door, and by the time he was inside the bathroom he was stumbling, but he was okay. Weak and on the verge of tears and he still couldn’t really breathe, but he was okay. Not okay enough to get up from the tiles and close the bathroom door before he would inevitably vomit for the second time that day without collapsing, but it was enough.

 

The practice of what was about to come was almost routine at that point- so much so he could easily go through with it even if he had just woken up with his head still in the fog of exhaustion. The same weakness shuddered throughout his body, and he was almost certain that the feeling was what it was like to have your bones replaced with jelly, and as he coughed, his entire chest ached, begging to get rid of the pain that was situated in his lungs, his throat. The first flower petal that he choked out through his coughing was decaying- it was a dark shade, folded and creased and ripped, and it made his mind scream inside the cage of his skull. Each cough that let out a flower came with a reminder.

 

_ She hates you. _

 

Connor’s arms were now braced on the walls, not in the headspace to really care that his hair was in his face still.

 

_ She’s your  _ _ sister _ _ , and she hates you. _

 

He wanted the thoughts, the flowers to stop. He was screaming it, but no sound left his lips. In his heavy breathing and silent screaming, he suddenly lurched forward, his throat burning in protest as he heaved into the bowl. Once. Twice. Each time it made him have to consciously hold himself from collapsing into nothing more than a mere pile of bones and tissue- and flowers. 

 

_ But that wouldn’t be a problem at all, would it? She wants you dead.  _

 

He shook his head, blocking out his thoughts and focusing on just  _ breathing _ for once in his life. They were all shaky, useless breaths, a pain he didn’t want to deal with, but it was better than allowing himself to succumb to the facts behind why he was vomiting in the first place while in a weak heap on the bathroom floor. His throat was still so, so dry- the air burned to breathe and each time he even tried it was hard not to regret it. But it pulled him up rough, calloused hands nonetheless, and he could stand after nothing more than a minute. Was it worth leaving the bathroom? He’d only spit out flowers again, or hold it back until he’d finally end up with grey skin and empty eyes on the floor. He got up anyway. Why did anyone do anything when their efforts would only be wasted? Simply for the hell of it. So Connor did the same. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yoooooooooooo  
> school has started for me. so yay. im still gonna try to keep up updates, but dont be too surprised if its a bit late. homework sucks man
> 
> ~synth


	5. Muffled Sounds and Ripped Petals (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor had no idea what time it had been when he had slowly opened his curtains and window with his laptop still illuminating his room, but matching with the white light of the screen were stars dotted along the sky, hidden by clouds and gases and they were begging him to leave the cooped up inside of his bedroom. He would’ve left regardless of if it had been four in the afternoon or four in the morning. He just needed to leave, do something, live.

He didn’t eat that night, nor was food the first thing on his mind. Despite not eating since breakfast, he had a complete lack of appetite, and it wasn’t as if he wasn’t already accustomed to not eating for what could go up to days on end. It wasn’t really worth eating, anyway. Going downstairs meant facing his parents, and neither of them seemed to be in a good mood. None of them did. 

 

Connor wasn’t vomiting anymore, thankfully, but the coughing didn’t stop, and the sound was drilling its way into his skull each and every time. It was only about 6:30-something and the sun’s light was diminishing slowly over the horizon. The view from his bedroom window was filled with silhouettes of rooftops, trees- there was a construction site he could see in the distance, which seemed to be just clearing out dirt still. It seemed that digging out dirt was the only goal. He had seen the same thing happen for at least a week by then, and from his view, nothing had changed. As the sun cast its light through the clouds in an array of warm colors and the sun’s brightness only made more shadows in his room, he pulled down his blinds, using his laptop to light the desk he slumped down in. An open page on his leather bound sketchbook lay there for him, the cheap ballpoint pen he didn’t recall ever actually paying for begging him to just pick it up, but he didn’t need any words for him to tell him. 

 

With the image of his window’s view clear in his mind, he turned the relatively small sketchbook around so that it was landscape, and sketched. Each line was short and quick, but the repetitive motion was second nature. He had never really been much of a landscape artist at all, but he had practice from junior year when he took art, and the entire first semester was just drawing cities, gardens, streets- the concepts became familiar quickly, as if he had known them his whole life. Maybe he had. It wasn’t hard to believe that simply drawing until his hand was cramped was as much a part of him as his limbs. It felt a million times more natural than doing anything else- school was a nightmare that did nothing but force him to have to drag him through the day learning nothing but which people hated him the most. School fights and dinner table arguments got his energy out in the moment, but afterward was just a memory to look back on when his mind needed  _ more _ things to prove him unworthy of anything, or for someone else to point out made him evil. But drawing in the silence of his room, ignoring the mess that surrounded his room, his head, every corner of his life, it was almost like a small pocket of silence in the noise of the world. He could live in another universe of a book for a while, or draw until the sun rose once again, and everything might be okay.

 

It was an ideal, of course, and nothing more, but despite that, despite himself, it was the only thing he could say he did that was really worth it. He didn’t regret drawing. Even if he wasted a week on sketches that ended up in the rubbish, they kept the world at bay. He could listen to his thoughts and just  _ ignore them _ for once in his life. He could know that everything was falling apart at the seams, and if one more person made a jab at him in the name of humor, he would end up stealing a bottle of Ambien from the medicine cabinet and swallow them all the very same day, and not break something or clench his jaw so hard his teeth felt as if they were breaking at the thought. He could just know and not care. Because so what if he was that close to shattering? It was going to happen sooner or later. Fearing it wouldn’t help him. If anything, trying to prevent himself from breaking only seemed to make himself a more susceptible target.

 

By the time Connor had finished sketching the landscape of his window, or at least what he had retained memory of, the coughing had subsided, and the light slipping from underneath the curtain had completely diminished. His thoughts had thankfully calmed to nothing more than a mere murmur, never really gone, but easily forgotten. He looked at the drawing itself- it wasn’t much, not really, especially not when both the guidelines and the finished result were done in unerasable ink, but it was easy to get away with when the sun created a silhouette of the buildings that dotted the horizon and everything after it. His drawings weren’t really neat, either. More.. stylistically messy, in the sense that if he tried to draw smooth long lines, he would spend far too much time on a simple black and white sketch that was never even that personal, nor did it aim to be a masterpiece. It was just scribbled straight lines, dark and crosshatched to contrast the blankness of the sun. He finished it off with a sentence sprawled in messy text in the sky:  _ LIGHT IS USELESS WITHOUT DARK. _ Of course, it didn’t take long for him to immediately find each and every flaw visible to the naked eye. The darkness of the shadows was consistently inconsistent, making them appear like random lines rather than shadows adding depth. There were ink blots all over the place that had been smeared, and all the long lines were so clearly  _ shaky _ it would be clear that he didn’t bother finding a ruler to help with both that and perspective- of which was all over the place. Connor frowned, squinted to see how it looked that way-... Which was simply blurry. Maybe it would look better from a distance, but he didn’t see the point, especially when the only light allowing him to even see from the other side was his laptop, which was far too dull to show anything from any more than a few feet away. 

 

Instead, he opened a tab on the screen, loading up Twitter, and simply scrolling through his feed, not really interacting with any of the posts, but reading them nonetheless. It was the only social media he really used, but even then, as much time as he spent on there, he wasn’t one to reblog or like. His page itself was a simple black profile picture and banner with a bio of  _ ‘I draw sometimes’ _ with only about 12 original tweets of his drawings and a few accumulative retweeted things that followed no particular common theme. It was hard for him to understand how people could feel comfortable using Twitter- or any platform, for that matter- like a diary to just throw into the world for anyone to do anything with. There wasn’t any point writing it down to begin with, much less confining it to 280 characters per post. And who was even interested in reading people’s petty lives and unnecessarily strong opinions? Connor, maybe, was one of those people who would read those said opinions, for a laugh, if anything. Twitter was full of them, and it was almost hilarious to see some celebrity post a Toxic Opinion just to find that some SJW created an entire threat just to refute said opinion with their  _ own _ Toxic Opinion and he was left wondering if either wing had a conscience to think that  _ ‘Hey, maybe my opinion… isn’t a fact.’  _ It was so easy to believe that they didn't.

 

Jumping from long thread to long _ er _ thread grew boresome after some amount of time, and it didn’t take long for the trend to turn to video to video instead, and then site to site as he reloaded and clicked. It became tedious to find anything that could grip his attention and keep it, to the point that clenching and unclenching his hand was more interesting than anything he could find. His palms quickly developed dents in them from his painted nails digging into the skin and they began to sting. A sort of restlessness filled him, and suddenly all he really wanted was to get out. 

 

Connor had no idea what time it had been when he had slowly opened his curtains and window with his laptop still illuminating his room, but matching with the white light of the screen were stars dotted along the sky, hidden by clouds and gases and they were begging him to leave the cooped up inside of his bedroom. He would’ve left regardless of if it had been four in the afternoon or four in the morning. He just needed to  _ leave, _ do  _ something, live. _ He could sometimes go days, months without seeing the sky, but other times, recklessness and restlessness took over and he simply couldn’t stay. The dark sky was hissing at him to go out, the quiet of the darkness splintering at the silent sound. Despite how hushed it was, compared to everything else he could hear, it was too clamorous to ignore and shove under a blanket, in the same way that in day to day living, the house creaking from old walls was completely normal and so ordinary that it was ignored entirely, but night multiplied the volume by the number of stars in its sky. Similarly, the whisperings of the clouds and moon were so, so quiet, but he could hear them clear as day. 

 

He slowly moved his body through the window, cringing at each sound that was made as he climbed. It was painful to freeze and tense up every few seconds, not out of real fear, as while whatever punishment he would get for not telling them he was leaving was bound to be minor, but rather the thrill that came with doing anything in spite of his parents- and not wanting it to be stopped because of shitty rules.

 

As he hesitantly placed his foot down on the overhanging roof from his window with almost nothing echoing through the house, a sense of triumph rushed through him, and without a second thought, he pulled the rest of himself out of the window, standing up with pride of his minor accomplished feat for a millisecond before sitting down, edging as close to the ground as he could without breaking his legs from the fall. If cats could always land on their feet, Connor was not at all a cat, at all. So, naturally, when he reached what, in his manic-like state, he considered a suitable height, he jumped. The pain that sent a sharp shock through his body when he fell on his side felt like nothing, though. He was outside, finally, and he could go.

 

When he had left, he didn't have much of a plan of where to go, what to do. His brain’s objective was simply to leave. To do  _ something  _ that had nothing to do with the flowers, his sister, parents, school, everything. Not to say he wanted to do something self-focussed, either, but he needed to forget about everything else in his world. That wasn't in the house. A dose of escapism, if you will. As much as he started without a plan, he was drawn to go across the road and see what the park there was like when drenched in the shadows of the night. So, unable to care enough to debate whether or not he  _ should  _ go, he crossed.

 

Happy moments seemed useless to Connor. No one  _ really _ cares if you’ve done something that’s considered a feat for you. They’re not going to force you into spilling details if you can’t be bothered. It always seems to be something like ‘Oh, you had a great day? Yeah? Well, okay, I want to do this now.’ Why was being bad considered so much more important? And why was it so much easier to have people talk about you being evil than a hero?- Not that he could ever be a hero. But there wasn’t much of a point in being good, not when there were no songs about being happy or excited, only sappy love songs and slow, melancholy ballads. 

 

As useless as happy moments were, how pointless it was to be peaceful, they weren’t hard to fight off. Maybe he just generally warded them away without noticing himself, but when they appeared, they weren’t hard to pounce on without a second thought. Would getting lost in the park be considered a happy moment? His thoughts couldn’t seem to properly get to him in his need to just go out and do something, and it didn’t feel like a  _ bad  _ moment, at all. It just felt real.

 

So Connor let himself disappear into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the shorter chapter again!! this is just an extension of last chapter, but,, whatever
> 
> ~synth


	6. Good Moments Never Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All those words, everything he said, felt like they had been said a thousand times before, each and every one easy to spit out without feeling the meaning. She was right. Zoe was always fucking right, and he was always wrong, but as much as the words ‘I’m sorry’ would be wholehearted, he lost his voice every time he tried. It was hopeless. And it wasn’t like she would want to hear him, anyway.

Connor’s eyes were split open at the same time that sunbeams split through the leaves that were collected above him in bunches on the trees. He was only vaguely aware of where he was, weariness dragging his eyelids shut again. He stayed like that for a while, grass and dirt between his fingertips and hard bark against his head and back. His entire body was stiff and moving seemed like a feat impossible to achieve. He didn’t really  _ want _ to move if he was being honest. Would it be better to leave and face his parents, school, the students in it? With the only real company being his own loneliness and temper? What could he even get out of it? A joke? A drawing? A half interesting quote?

 

What about living? Would he get anything out of that?

 

It was so, threateningly easy to say that no, he wouldn’t. If he managed to survive, he wouldn’t be able to graduate that year. He had been lucky before- managing to pick up his slipping grades. But as they slipped, he was sleeping, dreaming of what it would be like to just be unconscious forever. 

 

He opened his eyes, if anything, just to check the time, wincing at the morning light.  _ God, _ why was it so bright at… 8 in the morning? Too late to even try going to school, too early for Cynthia to go to her yoga classes. Larry would only just be leaving, but he would only really just try saying that if he didn’t try harder, he would get nowhere in life. The words were nothing more than a broken record at that point. Something pleasant to say in the false hope of a future. But there was no future. Not for him. He coughed harshly, the sheer force of it lurching his body forward and forcing him to blink firmly to come back to his senses. Or at least back to his senses enough to move his body, his fingers. Enough to realize that even his own body was trying to prove that he was going nowhere to him with petals he coughed into a hand he didn’t know had flown to his mouth. He  _ knew. _ The world could stop turning every minor thing into a catastrophe already.

 

Even if he  _ did _ survive, and  _ did _ graduate, the next step would be getting a job, and into college. Both major feats for someone with his background. His grades alone were a mix of not being turned in and some occasional B grades whenever he was in a decent enough headspace to focus on anything at all- as well as actually spend those small periods of time on  _ schoolwork _ of all things. It really wasn’t worth his time. Why would he ever think about homework and school when he felt half-pleasant? To be fair, most of those times, he ended up in a spiral of contemplating if it was going to help at all if he enjoyed his happiness when it was certain to be gone before long, and if he enjoyed it, he’d only be disappointed when it ended. It went on from that, making himself ask questions that didn’t give him any happiness to enjoy anymore at all. 

 

He had nowhere in life to go, no reason to live. No texts from anyone despite his disappearance- though maybe that was expected from a teenager. Still, his parents had set up a curfew time of one, and they  _ had _ to get hourly messages ensuring safety. For once, Larry was the one who set up that rule rather than Cynthia, and he sure as hell hadn’t let it shift since it was made. Connor couldn’t really give half a shit about whatever consequences would come of him not following it, though. He  _ didn’t _ regret going out, and no punishment would force that on him. 

 

But punishment or no, that didn’t change the winding paths of trees and dirt and grass that seemed to expand forever and fade over the horizon. The events of the night before were foggy in themselves, and he had absolutely  _ no _ recollection of which way he went and where the hell he had woken up. Still stiff from staying still for hours on end, Connor pushed himself to his feet, stretching and evaluating his surroundings. He had been asleep under a tree at the base of a hill, light parting on its peak. Great oak trees were planted all over the place, lining dirt paths that winded all over the place and circling the hill. The dull sage of the grass was on the verge of seeming overgrown, more than a few inches taller than the constantly trimmed lawn of his own house- a part of its dollhouse-perfect image. No sign of the paths that the grass parted around leading to anywhere, though. 

 

He checked the time again, coming across the fact that it was a Saturday, damning the fact that by the time he actually decided to go home, he’d be starved for coffee, and valuable sleeping hours would be stolen by caffeine. But it  _ did _ explain why he had received no messages from his family asking about his whereabouts. Maybe he had time to get home without anyone picking up on his absence in the first place- though, he didn’t have much of a clue what time the people in his house actually woke up. It could be any time, be it 6 in the morning or long into the afternoon, and he would genuinely have no clue. He could only be blamed for that one- he managed to cause almost every problem in his own life, and then some more in other’s lives as well. Maybe if he stayed in the park until he starved, that pattern would finally come to an end. His stomach growled in response- right, because it had been over 24 hours since he had eaten last, and that wasn’t even a full meal. Maybe he wouldn’t  _ starve _ to death in the park, and not that day. Another way, another day, maybe, but he would’ve much preferred to  _ eat _ on  _ that day _ before his empty stomach caved in on itself. 

 

Connor didn’t have much of a clue of which way to turn, and going up to the hill’s peak wouldn’t do him much good when the towering trees blocked any and all advantages of height. All it would do is waste his lingering energy. Instead, he set onto the path that seemed to lead directly from where he was standing, winding to the left across the horizon in the hopes that  _ maybe _ he would have some form of luck that day. Who was he kidding, though? Luck was foreign after years of it drifting away. 

 

The park seemed to be some mix of being kept and being left alone for years to just let live. Not that it looked awful at all- paths remained clear and the grass only stood an inch or so above his ankles. It was a state park, not yet abandoned and shut down. He wondered who would rather go out to the Ellison State Park just to tidy the place up and guide people around than simply do.. anything else, really. Maybe it was simply for the money, but it certainly wasn’t the highest paying job one could choose to partake in. Connor could see the appeal in going to the park, simply to be there, but having to go around, answer questions, whatever else a park ranger here did, sucked the potential enjoyment of it right out, leaving nothing but a hollow, monochrome husk of a place. Perhaps that was just him, though.

 

The sun grew higher in the sky and started to hide away in the clouds of the day as he walked, dimming the bright colors of the park to a colder hue for only a moment before the pleasant warmth returned once again, shining through the leaves. Despite how the oak leaves piled up upon one another at the canopy, they did little to block out the sun. His eyes wandered to a leaf falling a few steps ahead from a branch that seemed to curve over the path only just high enough to walk under without him having to bend his knees to avoid hitting his head on the thick, dark wood of it. He caught the falling leaf as it fell past the height of his elbow, standing still to tear it into tiny shapes rough and jagged at the edges. When he finished with them, he ripped a few more leaves from the overhead branch, continuing to walk along the path while breaking apart the dark green oak leaves.

 

For a while, Connor just walked like that, paying no attention to the time. Sort of still in a sleepy haze, but not particularly urgent. Not calm, either, but he was fine. And fine was enough. Fine lasted him long enough to get to the end of the park, to an open street of houses lined next to one another. The street that, as he looked, he realized was not his own. No, because the houses here didn’t have the perfect dollhouse with a grey Volvo in the driveway that he had left from the night before, or the bus stop with a worn tin roof that always seemed to have water dripping from it regardless of whether or not it had rained. The entrance he had exited from didn’t have the wooden sign that had only appeared over the summer, taking its place at the front of the park. Instead, it simply had a plastic map laminated and tied around a fence post. With no clue how deep into the park he had walked the night before, Connor had to take a moment to figure out which side of the park he was at, less in order to find his way home, and more to just know where the hell he was. There were four entrances- the main front entrance being on his own street, the rest seemingly only there to confuse anyone who didn’t come and go regularly. Or maybe whoever built it simply had no courtesy to put a  _ YOU ARE HERE  _ mark on any of their maps. 

 

He gave up on trying to figure his own whereabouts with a huff, turning around back to the street he could’ve gone down a million times before and still have no clue where anything was relative to it. He didn’t have to check the time to come to the realization that at that point, the only way he could get home without anyone noticing was if he could teleport or fly or something. Neither of which he could do. If he did, maybe then he wouldn’t have ended up fucking  _ lost _ anyway. The fact that he’d managed to walk to another side of the park was both surprising and unpleasant- he only ever went near the front part of the park when he  _ did _ go outside, and the way that Zoe had always driven him to school was far in the other direction, as well as the only way he was used to walking to and from school when he was allowed- or able- to. Whichever way the route back home was meant walking in circles around the edge. Not worth the time or effort. Connor genuinely couldn’t care less if putting off walking home would only make the path lengthier, or if he was doomed to some form of being grounded- he was much more focused on trying to untangle his earphones.

 

After no more than nine songs, the volume in Connor’s earphones faded to nothing for a mere second, replaced soon by the buzzing of his phone in the pocket of his jacket. He knew immediately who it was- and what they wanted to talk about. More than a few harsh, choking coughs a minute or so prior to the call gave him a hint. He didn’t want to pick up. It was a shitshow broadcasting from his phone, one that he didn’t want to get involved in if he really didn’t have to. He left it alone to ring, waiting for  _ Hope of Morning  _ to keep playing. It did, for a moment, before again being interrupted by a short moment of silence to signify a notification. Out of sheer curiosity, he checked it, confirming his suspicions. 

 

**_zoe_ **

_ (1) Missed call _ **** _ 2m ago _

 

He opened his phone to call her back, seeing a voice message left behind.  _ “Pick up the phone, you bastard,”  _ was all that was in the recording, but it was spat with such spite, he knew that if he didn’t pick up at the first ring next time, his sister would launch a fucking search party just to yell at him. It wasn’t like he had even been out for long- it was 10:47, and less than 12 hours was not at all the longest time he’d disappeared for- but Zoe’s alarm that he wasn’t home was still less than surprising. Most of the time, she tried to steer clear of him, though, so he found it unusual that  _ she _ was the one to call, instead of Cynthia. A second call left him to forget about the question altogether and answer the call.

 

“Where  _ are _ you?” The harshness that had disappeared from Zoe’s voice had startled him more- the exhaustion in her question made him pause and lose his voice for a bare second. She wasn’t snapping or demanding. Just asking a question. He didn’t know why he hated that so much. 

 

“Does it matter? No one’s died because I’ve left any time before,” He hissed into the phone.

 

A sigh. “Where are you.”

 

“I haven’t committed any crimes, I’m not off smoking cocaine, I’m not going to torment the next person I see to tears, or whatever else you think I’m doing. Fuck the  _ hell _ off, Zoe.” He winced at his own words, hating the sound of them in his mouth. After everything else he’d said before, though, it was surprising he hadn’t bleached his mouth to rid it of its past words.

 

“Just come home. I swear, none of us know why you do shit like this all the time. Do you you  _ like _ making Mom and Dad fight?”

 

“You know they’re gonna fight anyway.”   
  
“You  _ aren’t helping.” _ __   
  


“I never fucking do.”   
  
“Why,” Zoe sighed. It was so, so easy to see her face crumble into something of mere frustration. Anger. “Can’t you stop making everything about yourself all the time? Is it not enough that even dinners  _ without  _ you are about which shrink Mom wants you to see next, or what Dad thinks of your most recent stunt? You’re right- you  _ aren’t  _ helping. And I don’t know why you can’t even  _ try _ to.”   
  
“Don’t tell me  _ you  _ don’t go out of your way to pull shit just for your  _ own  _ fucking spotlight!”   
  
“And so what if I do? It’s not like I ever get a second thought!”

 

“And what are their second thoughts, then?”   
  
“Why do you think they’d ever bother talking to  _ me?” _ _   
_   
“It’s not like everyone fucking hates  __ you!”   
  


“And maybe they hate  _ you _ for a good reason.” 

 

Connor swallowed hard, not able to even force his mouth open to reply. He didn’t think he wanted to say anything anymore. Maybe it was worth it to go mute.

 

“You know what? Don’t go home. I’ll tell Mom you wouldn’t pick up your phone. It’s not worth the time trying to convince you to come back home. You’ll only pull some other attention-whoring bullshit.” 

 

And then she was gone. 

  
All those words, everything he said, felt like they had been said a thousand times before, each and every one easy to spit out without feeling the meaning. She was right. Zoe was always fucking right, and he was always wrong, but as much as the words _‘I’m sorry’_ would be wholehearted, he lost his voice every time he tried. It was hopeless. And it wasn’t like she would want to hear him, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i like these shorter chapters- i feel like otherwise im stretching scenes out too long. do yall prefer these 2000-2500 word long chapters or 3000-3500?
> 
> ~synth


	7. -authors note-

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa im sorry but im gonna be taking a hiatus from now to,, the end of march? maybe? i just need some time to sort life out, ig. sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> hey, thanks for reading this!!! its a part of my fanfic for a dear evan hansen big bang, so expect more of this. let me know if you like it, if you hate it, whatever. do whatever you want.  
> anyway, thanks for getting this far!
> 
> ~synth


End file.
